Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitar
Cedar is temperamental with regard to the age of the strings, and to relative humidity (RH).
Strings: The brilliance of the treble strings begins to fade inside of a month with any steel string (metallurgy 101) because of the stress degradation of the elasticity that provides the frequency response when the strings are placed in motion. Spruce has a very good frequency response and older strings are still audibly acceptable for a longer period of time than Cedar will tolerate. I changed my strings on the Cedar top I had (Breedlove customer shop concert) every 3 weeks because it would not give good treble response (brilliance) after that.
RH: If the RH of Cedar is held at 50% for more than an hour the frequency response drops significantly and the sound of the guitar switches from a sustained ring to a dull thud and nothing short of correcting the RH back to around 45-47% would restore the sound.
That was the case with my guitar. For the 12 years I played it the (Western Red) Cedar top faithfully yielded that rich Cedar sound but it required relatively new strings and strict control of the RH to keep it that way. I bought a room dehumidifier for that one guitar. Spruce is much more forgiving.
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This is an awesome post, thank you! Perhaps just a coincidence, but I have enjoyed playing my OM/PW Cedar a lot this winter when the RH in my humidity controlled home hovered around 40. Now that we're back up to 48 - 50, and I'm enjoying the guitar less, I'm thinking about what you just wrote...